


Once More, With Feeling

by prefacing



Category: Pandora Hearts
Genre: Babysitting, Humor, Injury, Other, Storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-19
Updated: 2012-06-19
Packaged: 2017-11-08 03:10:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/438479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prefacing/pseuds/prefacing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>elliot, recuperating in bed, forces break to read him a bedtime story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once More, With Feeling

**Author's Note:**

> a gift for kosy!

“You’re not doing the voices.”

Irked, Break looks up from the slim book held his hands and side-eyes the adolescent leaning against the headboard. Bandages cover half his face and one arm is in a sling, but Elliot’s spine is ramrod straight and the look on his face is one of clear displeasure.

“ _Voices?_ ”

The youngest Nightray gives him a lofty look. “Every character has to have a different voice – the princess, the frog, the alligator. You might be the strongest fighter in Pandora, but you’re a horrible storyteller.”

It takes all the restraint Break has, and then some, not to fling the book into Elliot’s face, but he manages, the only sign of insult taken lying in the faint slip of his smile.

Xerxes Break is not a babysitter. Xerxes Break has no fondness for children whatsoever, unless they are lost and alone and willing to become his tool. Children, even almost grown up children, are nothing but nuisances. But here he sits, his hands (covered still in overly long sleeves) cradled around a picture book – a _picture book_ , of all things! – in a chair next to the bed of one (1) Elliot Nightray. The entire scene is preposterous.

But the mop-haired servant is bedridden with the flu, and Gilbert, that useless lump, has by some miracle managed to extract a promise out of Break not to harass his youngest brother while he fusses over Oz. It had involved quite a few bribes centered around a particular dessert of choice, but Break plans on never giving in to any of Seaweed Head’s bribes again.

The stupid B-rabbit is, as per usual, parked firmly in the kitchen, stuffing her face with all the meat she can find. Even illness can’t seem to stop that black hole of a stomach.

“Well?”

The expectant look on the brat’s face ticks Break off, but instead of committing anything potentially law-breaking, Break merely turns back to the page in front him and begins to read, in a high pitched voice, the lines of the flighty blonde princess:

“’But you’re a frog! I can’t possibl—”

He is interrupted before he even gets to finish his line.

“That’s horrible. Girls don’t sound like that! Do it again.”

_It wouldn’t be murder if I push him towards the windowsill and he accidentally trips and falls out, would it?_ But the thought is short lived. Girly princess, take two.

“But you’re a _frog_! I ca—”

He’s interrupted even sooner that last time, this time with a pillow aimed at his face. He barely manages to dodge in time.

“What the _hell_ are you doing, you brat?!”

“What kind of girl sounds like a mouse??”

Break is this close, _this close_ , to saying fuck it all when an all too familiar head topped in tangled black hair pops into the room.

“ _Break…_ ”

By this point, Break’s mouth is replicating a thin line almost exactly, and it’s with extremely sullen movements that he lifts the book back up to proper reading position. Gilbert deems this satisfactory, and whisks back out of the room.

He makes the mistake of looking up. A smirk dances across Elliot’s lips.

_That cake better be the size of this damn room._


End file.
